The federal government has found no evidence that flaws in Dominion voting machines have ever been exploited, including in the 2020 election, according to the executive director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, has notified election officials in more than a dozen states that use the machines of several vulnerabilities and mitigation measures that would aid in detection or prevention of an attempt to exploit those vulnerabilities. The move marks the first time CISA has run voting machine flaws through its vulnerability disclosure program, which since 2019 has examined and disclosed hundreds of vulnerabilities in commercial and industrial systems that have been identified by researchers around the world. (The program is aimed at helping companies and consumers better secure devices from breaches. The security of Dominion voting machines has become a flash point in the fraught politics of the 2020 election with supporters of former president Donald Trump claiming that the results were tainted by machines that were manipulated, while election officials — including Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and governor — insisted that there was no evidence of breaches or altered results.
National: Trump allies explored using armed workers to seize vote data | Sarah D. Wire/Los Angeles Times
Supporters on the fringes of former President Trump’s circle explored seeking sweeping authority after the 2020 election to enlist armed private contractors to seize and inspect voting machines and election data with the assistance of U.S. marshals, according to a draft letter asking the president to grant them permission. The previously undisclosed “authorizing letter” and accompanying emails were sent on Nov. 21, 2020, from a person involved in efforts to find evidence of fraud in the election that year. The documents, which were reviewed by The Times, are believed to be among those in the possession of the House Jan. 6 committee, which is scheduled to begin public hearings Thursday. The letter appears to be one of the earliest iterations of a draft executive order presented to the then-president in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, by then- Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne in an effort to take control of voting machines. The email and attached draft letter were sent to Cyber Ninjas Chief Executive Doug Logan and cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose by Andrew Whitney, a British technology entrepreneur who made his way inside Trump’s circle in 2020 after he sought the president’s support for Oleandrin, a toxic botanical extract Whitney claimed was a miracle cure for COVID-19. Logan, who went on to conduct a partisan “audit” of election results in Maricopa County, Ariz., and Penrose worked for weeks after the 2020 election with a group including Powell, Flynn and Byrne that sought access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud.
Full Article: Trump allies explored using armed workers to seize vote data – Los Angeles Times